


Caring Too Much

by longnoideatime



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:21:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21692941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longnoideatime/pseuds/longnoideatime
Summary: After the Ember Island Players and Katara’s confrontation with Aang, she tries to convince herself that Zuko has nothing to do with her confusion. E to be safe.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 267





	1. Lost

Katara is not generally thought of as delicate. She wears her moral fire around her like an armour, her compassion and compulsive need to take care of others wreathed in each hand. Perhaps that’s why she liked Jet: he could see that she was broken on the inside, just a little, this tiny little fracture he could slip his finger into and pull. She’s a girl who lost her mother, whose father left her, and a girl who had to grow up far sooner than she should have. Jet saw the neediness she so carefully disowns and steps on, the secreted desire for even momentary freedom, and exploited them as she greedily accepted any seeming of closeness she could wring from him. She remembers being beneath him on the floor of his hut, expecting release and feeling only hollow. They were using each other, although at the time there had been this pernicious little voice that told her she only needed to try harder with him to have what she truly wanted.

The first day that she saw Zuko was the first she saw Aang. The air bender had told her that she _was_ a kid, and it had only seemed laughable when hours later her home was invaded and she was tasked with saving the world at his side. I mean “ _tasked_ ”— She would have gone with him without everyone claiming it as destiny, but it was just another weight added to her shoulders. She stayed awake long past Aang and Sokka some nights, turning it over in her mind what failure would look like. The next time she truly remembered Zuko, he had tied her to a tree, his voice smoke tickling her ear as he told her he understood honour and burden too, dangling her mother’s necklace before her. When they met again she was “too pretty for him”, which still gives her a smug satisfaction, although as he loaded her paralysed body onto the back of the shirshu, his hands were careful, as if he thought just by touching her he might have hurt her. It was unexpected from an arrogant prince to his captive. She fought him at the oasis and he did hurt her then, although it all would have felt somewhat like a dance if not for the stakes, part of her thrilling to the challenge. She didn’t know why she was glad Aang decided to save him; she’s always been the unforgiving sort, a side effect of caring as intensely as she does, about nearly everything.

His sister was nothing like him, cruel with her blue fire and her cutting eyes. They were the same shade as his, she noticed when they all warred in the desert, but his had never held an expression like hers. Azula was like lightning, deadly, but there in an instant and gone; he is fire, growing slowly but ultimately devouring all in its path. She’s always admired that about him, even when it wasn’t to her advantage; he continues, when anyone else would have given up. She should have pushed him aside and made him let her heal his uncle, as fearless as she is with Aang in the avatar state, but she couldn’t make herself do it then, too afraid of... something. She’s not entirely sure what.

Now they’re here, together in the Fire Nation at his family’s summer home. She could have hated him for the rest of her life and been happy, secure, but instead he gifted her with the catharsis of Yon Rha and the feeling of her arms around his neck. She loves him for it, but she’s still so angry inside for no reason she can put into words. The play is over, she heard them all tromp home hours ago, although she pretended to be asleep, her back to the door when Suki looked in. As she eases carefully through the darkened, silent halls she knows where in the house he will be, her footsteps noiseless as she slips outside to their makeshift bending area. He looks as though he’s only stopped practicing now, still breathing a bit heavily as he sits and watches the waves, his face surprised when he finally catches sight of her before breaking into a gentle half-smile that still manages to look as if it isn’t sure it belongs there on his face. She supposes they all know how she ran from Aang’s confession. He looks like he’s about to say something before she steps over his waist and plops down, straddling him, her heart beating in her chest. She kisses him because there is no other option with the fire burning her inside, black smoke suffocating her as it climbs her throat, her hands digging desperately into his hair. His hands are on her waist — surprised, she thinks, more than anything — but she knows how to do at least this much, even if the only knowledge Jet left her was how to feel shame, rolling her hips against his. His breath hitches against her lips, this little tiny sound she feels more than hears, and it makes her pull back slightly, her thumbs tracing the edges of either side of his face tenderly as she leans her forehead against his.

“What are you doing?” he asks, his voice gone rough, escaping him only in a whisper.

She steps off of him and pulls her underwear down her legs beneath her skirt before sitting back across his lap. “Fucking you.”

He doesn’t ask why, although she can feel him asking it as she kisses him again. He’s not this sort of man, she knows, but he also— but he also knows the darkness inside her. He has his own, and in the face of whatever terror has gripped her, he lets her take from him. Their hands fumble together at his pants, she pulls her own skirt higher over her legs and hunches slowly down over him. Part of her is surprised to find him hard, Zuko so serious she half expected his body not to have the normal reactions of a sixteen year old male. The only concession she makes to her inexperience as she tries to fit their bodies together is the way her fingernails dig into his shoulders as she grips them tightly, trying to prevent a strained grunt from escaping between her teeth. It was easier, she thinks, lying on the floor, when all she had to do was open her legs and let Jet spill himself inside her, but it didn’t feel like this, even though she tells herself she’s not doing it for the same reasons. Zuko’s hands are white knuckled on her hips, and she can feel him straining not to push himself into her, her body too tight around him for either of them to be particularly comfortable.

She needs confirmation that she doesn’t have feelings for him, she needs to know that being so close to him only makes her feel empty, she needs to escape the feeling of inevitability he inspires in her, the absolute terror she feels at all of it, but when she finally manages to relax enough to lower herself the rest of the way onto him, he is looking at her in a desperate, strangled sort of way. She kisses him to silence the feeling it evokes, and he kisses her back as if he no longer needs any answers for she is herself an answer. She rocks her hips against him, trying to figure out the proper rhythm, but it isn’t until his thumbs start drawing slow circles on either side of her waist where he holds her — his hips rising to meet hers — that she figures it out, their bodies connecting with a naturalness she doesn’t know what to do with. He whispers her name as he kisses her worshipfully, and she feels his hand fumble between their bodies to reach between her folds, rubbing slow circles above where they’re joined and making her hips move against him while he faintly shakes from his own restrained motion. She traces her hands down either side of his neck, over his collarbones, exploring him while he is focused on her and his own self-control, even though she knows she shouldn’t, and he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t be thinking of her, he should be seeking his own pleasure, and she should feel only like a glove he has borrowed, or maybe because she started this the reverse should be true. She pulls his hand away from her, and he slowly starts to move again, looking at her for confirmation it is what she wants, his eyes tearing at her with their care for her, her body so much more sensitive around him now. She knows that she’s more than started to feel something inside her where he rubs, the waves of need building making her whimper. She’s holding him too tightly, as he starts to thrust into her faster and she pushes herself against him mindlessly, in search of the same pleasure. He’s holding her too tightly too, and she’s not sure why the way their arms are wrapped around each other means as much to her as the way he’s working himself in and out of her body when he feels so good there between her legs. They are both breathing wrong, strangled little huffs escaping Zuko despite himself while she sounds like she’s crying. She buries her face against his neck and he clutches at her as if he will fly away without her tethering him.

“Katara, have you—? I’m going— I’m—“ He barely sounds like himself, his skin burning beneath hers.

She works herself harder against him at his words and he shudders as a groan slips between his teeth, hilting himself as deeply as he can inside her before he twitches and she feels warmth filling her. She whimpers, coming undone as he does, her nails digging into his skin where she grabs him.

It is long moments of their silent breaths beneath the moon before she hardens herself, smoothing any expression off her face and standing carefully off him. The sudden loss of the part of him that had been stretching and filling her stings, but she doesn’t let it show. She wipes their wetness away from her with her discarded underwear, before offering a clean side to him to dry himself off. He takes it, his eyes careful on her, his face so nakedly vulnerable she can feel a knife twisting inside her like a physical thing. She wants to soothe his caution and uncertainty, she wants to kiss him gently and have it be easy to claim him as her own, she wants violence from him to soothe the self-hatred she feels that instead she will do nothing.

She will always choose Aang over anything for herself. Zuko doesn’t need her; Zuko challenges and supports her. Zuko treats her like an equal, not like a prize or a version of her that only exists in his head. And if she were for some unknowable reason to develop the ability to put herself first at this critical juncture, she would destroy Aang and destroy the world. A small, neglected part of her tells her she’s making excuses, that if she makes them now she will only keep making them, but she shoves that part of her even further away. She loves Aang. (Not like this.) They have other things to focus on. (If the world is ending and she feels something for Zuko burning on her lips, what better time is there to say it?) To say it when she can offer him nothing is selfish beyond measure. (He’ll understand. He always understands her anyway.)

She turns from Zuko before she can do something stupid, but as she does she feels his fingers slip into hers and her body trembles from the force of her own feelings. She doesn’t know what to do with any of them, but she stays still, facing away from him with their fingers gently, loosely resting together.


	2. The Hours Before

They are loud in the theatre lobby, rowdy like any group of kids, but Katara finds her eyes are instead on Zuko. She means to share her amusement at the rest of them, her brother acting as much like the younger kids as is humanly possible, her de facto role as mother of the group settled around her like a cloak she will never be able to take off, but when he meets her look the shy smile he gives her has nothing to do with them. She _loves_ that— She catches herself at the word, innocuous except in relation to him. She _likes_ that about him; that he looks at her for herself. Sometimes she feels like she would disappear if it wasn’t for the people around her, like their need created her existence as much as it defines it. She appreciates that he reminds her (them, Aang) otherwise.

They eventually manage to file in behind the rest of the crowd, despite the antics of “Team Avatar”, or whatever Sokka wants to call them now. Zuko doesn’t notice or ignores Aang trying to sit next to her in the dark as he claims the seat for himself, and she doesn’t look too closely at why part of her thrills, slipping him a small smile as he settles himself. She feels like the half of her sitting next to him is more alive than the other, her skin tingling nearest him. Her hand is so close to his she could easily take it, but she knows she has no reason to. 

The lights dim and she glances away just as he moves to meet her gaze; she feels much closer to him in the dark than she thought she would. If he could channel lightning she would ask him to take it out from beneath her skin. 

He doesn’t look particularly interested in the play as it starts, although his foot is tapping nervously where most wouldn’t notice. He offers a faint smile at Aang’s indignation at his portrayal, but she can sense his restlessness and lack of attention. She realises belatedly she’s watching him and every slight movement of his body beside her more than the actress that’s supposed to be her simpering helplessly. She hesitates for a moment, suspended like a fly in amber in the complicated mix of emotions inside her, but then carefully reaches out and covers Zuko’s hand with her own. 

His body jerks so minutely only someone paying the attention she is would notice, his eyes questioning as they turn to her. She tells herself that she’s physically affectionate, that it doesn’t matter that she’s touching him so casually when she does the same with everyone else, but she’s not convincing. She’s not stupid enough to believe she doesn’t know he‘s different.

“Are you alright?” she asks gently.

He shifts uncomfortably, but she notices how carefully he keeps the arm connected to her still. When he does speak he leans closer to do so and the scent of his skin wafts over her, this scent that smells distinctly like another person, and him, and like the heat a fire throws off. “I’m not looking forward to reliving all my past mistakes.” His unsure little smile is back, but sharper with pain and tinged with self-awareness and the knowledge of who he’s speaking to. At this distance it looks so much more like it’s meant for her than she knows what to do with.

She shifts her hand so it’s not just clasped overtop of his, but slipped into his grip. She looks at their conjoined hands so she doesn’t have to look at his face, doesn’t have to get swept away by anything there or inadvertently reveal herself, her cheeks warmer than they should be. It’s terrifying sometimes to be around him; she’s known so many things in her life that have gone wrong. 

The dark theatre they’re in is empty, no play on the stage, no crowd in the seats, the world silent except for him. His hand is hotter than hers, which is a little uncomfortable when the Fire Nation is already _sweltering_ , but she doesn’t want to let go, her grip tightening even at the thought. She’s constantly afraid with him that she’s stepping onto ice that’s too thin that will crack beneath her and send her floating off into the ocean, surrounded only by miles of open, overwhelming blue.

“We’ll fix them,” she tells him anyway, offering him the supportive smile she gives to the rest of them, though she thinks he can see through it. “You’re young,” she says, not knowing what she’s offering but knowing that she is offering _something_. “So we’ll fix them when this is over.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not sure how I feel about this second chapter, but now seemed the appropriate time to post it because of Netflix, kudos, and my deep love of approbation. If anyone is looking for ATLA ff recs, I strongly suggest searching for Lye_Tea’s work on this site.


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